Major Scriptures, Religious Texts and Influential Books

The lists on this page were not compiled by Adherents.com, but have been collected here from various sources. Adherents.com has no position on the subjective value of any of these books. These books are all highly significant from a sociological and historical perspective.

A repository of sacred texts, presented unmodified and without commentary, is sacred-texts.com.

For links to the sacred texts listed on this page (and others), we recommend the Religious and Sacred Texts site maintained by David Wiley. The site is non-sectarian, with an academic approach, and has quality links to religious texts (many with enhanced search and link features) in the following categories:

Bhagavad Gita

Bahai Texts

Bible

Buddhist Texts

Christian Fathers

Confucian Texts

Corpus Hermeticum

Dead Sea Scrolls

Divrei Torah

Enuma Elish

Ethiopian Texts

The Egyptian Book of the Dead

Gnostic Texts

Hindu Texts

Islamic Texts

Jain Texts

1st and 2nd Books of Jeu

Mormon Texts (Church of Jesus Christ)

Nag Hammadi Texts

Old Testament Apocrypha

Old Testament Pseudepigrapha

Pistis Sophia

New Testament Apocryphal Acts

New Testament Apocryphal Apocalypse

New Testament Apocryphal Gospels

Taoist Texts

Sepher Yetzirah

Shinto Texts

Sikh Texts

Tibetan Book of the Dead

Urantia Book

Zen Texts

Zoroastrian Texts

For a very comprehensive yet concise academic survey of the world's religious scriptures (but not the full texts), see the article "The World's Religions and Their Scriptures", part of the World Scripture compilation (Dr. Andrew Wilson, Editor, International Religious Foundation, 1991). The table below lists the cannonical works of scripture listed by Wilson. More complete descriptions may be found in his article.

Five Classics: Book of Songs; Book of History; Spring and Autumn Annals; Book of Ritual; I Ching (Book of Changes)

Confucianism (I-Ching is also cannonical for Taoism)

Four Books: Analects; the Great Learning; the Doctrine of the Mean; the Mencius

Confucianism

Tao Te Ching

Taoism

Chuang-tzu

Taoism

Treatise on Response and Retribution (T'ai-Shang Kan-Ying P'ien)

Taoism: popular religious Taoism

Tract of the Quiet Way (Yin Chih Wen)

Taoism: popular religious Taoism

Kojiki

Shinto

Nihon Shoki

Shinto

K-oki

Tenrikyo

Ofudesaki

Tenrikyo

Mikagura-uta

Tenrikyo

Michi-no-Shiori

Omoto

Johrei

Sekai Kyusei Kyo

Goseigen

Mahikari

Nectarean Shower of Holy Doctrines

Seicho-no-Ie

Song of the Angel

Seicho-no-Ie

Holy Sutra for Spiritual Healing

Seicho-no-Ie

Divine Teachings of Kyososama

Shinreikyo

Chun Boo Kyung

ancient Korean

Gleanings from the Writings of Baha'u'llah

Bahai Faith

Book of Certitude (Kitab-i-Iqan)

Bahai Faith

Hidden Words of Baha'u'llah

Bahai Faith

Epistle to the Son of the Wolf

Bahai Faith

Book of Mormon

Christianity: Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Doctrine and Covenants

Christianity: Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Pearl of Great Price

Christianity: Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures

Christianity: Christian Science

Dianetics

Scientology

From a statistical perspective, the most widely used scriptures in the United States are the Bible (Old and New Testament), Qur'an, the three books which Latter-day Saints use along with the Bible (Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, and Pearl of Great Price) and the Talmud. The Tao Te Ching and the I-Ching are also frequently purchased in the United States, but are rarely used in a formal religious setting.

Lists below are less comprehensive than the Wilson listing, reflecting the most well known or popular "major scriptures":

Major Religious / Scriptural Books(Heinlein)

Robert A. Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land (1961) is considered a classic of science fiction. In the Boucher survey of inspirational books (see below), Stranger ranked 8th, and was the only science fiction novel among the top 20. The story takes place about 35 years after the founding of the first human colony on the moon. No exact year is given, but presumably the book is set in a period between 2050 and 2100.

The plot revolves around the arrival on Earth of Michael Valentine Smith, the son of two astronauts to Mars who perished when the first manned trip to Mars lost contact with Earth soon after it arrived. Twenty-five years later the second manned expedition to Mars encounters Smith and the indigenous Martian race which raised him in their society.

In Stranger, Heinlein (an atheist) presents his views on a variety of topics, especially religion, sex, language, culture and politics. In one passage (pg. 290), a character is described surrounded by the major religious books of the world:

Talmud

Kama-Sutra

Bible

Book of the Dead

Book of Mormon

Koran

Golden Bough

The Way (i.e. the Tao-te-ching)

Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures

other, unnamed books from minor religions

Primary Religious and Sacred Texts(U. of Penn.)

The following list is from the "Religious Texts and Resources" web page of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Pennsylvania (27 October 1999). This list is taken from a list of links and resources titled "Primary Religious and Sacred Texts".

Top 20 Most Inspirational Books Ever Written

Source of book list: "The Most Inspirational Books Ever Written" web page (URL: http://www.abacom.com/~topten/insp/booklst1.html; viewed 27 October 1999), based on reader survey. Compiled by Stephane Boucher, France. Readers answered the question: "Which books had the most positive impact on your life?" The Bible's rank of zero signifies that it was mentioned overwhelmingly by respondents.

Rank

Book

Author

Author's Religious Background,Affiliation or Perspective

0

The Bible

various

Judaism; Christianity

1

Conversations with God:An Uncommon Dialogue

Neale Donald Walsch

Founder of ReCreation, which sponsors CWG study groupsWalsch also recommends Unity Church and Science of Mind

Pessimism and nostalgia at the bright dawn of the twentieth century must have seemed bizarre to contemporaries. After a century of war, mass murder,
and fanaticism, we know that Adamss insight was keen indeed.

2. C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man (1947)

Preferable to Lewiss other remarkable books simply because of the title, which reveals the true intent of liberalism.

3. Whittaker Chambers, Witness (1952)

The haunting, lyrical testament to truth and humanity in a century of lies (and worse). Chambers achieves immortality recounting his spiritual
journey from the dark side (Soviet Communism) to thein his eyesdoomed West. One of the great autobiographies of the millennium.

4. T.S. Eliot, Selected Essays, 1917-1932 (1932, 1950)

Here, one of the centurys foremost literary innovators insists that innovation is only possible through an intense engagement of tradition.
Every line of Eliots prose bristles with intelligence and extreme deliberation.

5. Arnold Toynbee, A Study of History (1934-1961)

Made the possibility of a divine role in history respectable among serious historians. Though ignored by academic careerists, Toynbee is
still read by those whose intellectual horizons extend beyond present fashions.

So amusing did the natives find the white woman's prurient questions that they told her the wildest tales-and she believed them! Mead misled a generation into believing that the fantasies of sexual progressives were an historical reality on an island far, far away.

So mesmerized were Americans by the authority of Science, with a capital S, that it took forty years for anyone to wonder how data is gathered on the sexual responses of children as young as five. A pervert's attempt to demonstrate that perversion is "statistically" normal.

4. Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man (1964)

Dumbed-down Heidegger and a seeming praise of kinkiness became the Bible of the sixties and early
postmodernism.

5. John Dewey, Democracy and Education (1916)

Dewey convinced a generation of intellectuals that education isn't about anything; it's just a method, a process for producing democrats and scientists who would lead us into a future that "works." Democracy and Science (both pure means) were thereby transformed into the moral ends of our century, and America's well-meaning but corrupting educationist establishment was born.

"One Book" List at rec.arts.books

In 1994 Paul Philips submitted a message to the Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.books that read in part:

My proposal is this: I would like for each of you to decide on a single book that you would most like for the world to read for inclusion in the list. The book that, for you, was the most influential, or thought-provoking, or enjoyable, or moving, or philosophically powerful, or deep in some sense you cannot properly define, or any other criteria you wish to set.

I will include your name and email address, along with any commentary care to include on why you chose this book above all others.

This was is in no way a popularity contest, but books which happened to receive three or more submissions are listed below (as of As of Jun 29 1998, at which time the list had 777 different books suggested by 1014 people):

Atlas Shrugged (15)

The Bible (13)

Lord of the Rings (11)

To Kill a Mockingbird (11)

A Prayer for Owen Meany (10)

The Book of Mormon (7)

Les Miserables (6)

The Brothers Karamazov (6)

The Catcher in the Rye (6)

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (6)

Catch-22 (5)

Nineteen Eighty-Four (5)

On the Road (5)

Stranger in a Strange Land (5)

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (5)

Gravity's Rainbow (4)

Steppenwolf (4)

The Little Prince (4)

The Mists of Avalon (4)

The Phantom Tollbooth (4)

The Stand (4)

Watership Down (4)

A Wrinkle in Time (3)

Anthem (3)

Brave New World (3)

Breakfast of Champions (3)

Cat's Cradle (3)

East of Eden (3)

Ender's Game (3)

Lonesome Dove (3)

Love in the Time of Cholera (3)

Magister Ludi (3)

Siddhartha (3)

The Book of the New Sun (3)

The Celestine Prophecy (3)

The Dispossessed (3)

The Eight (3)

The Fountainhead (3)

The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon (3)

The Power of One (3)

The Prophet (3)

The Urantia Book (3)

This Present Darkness (3)

Winter's Tale (3)

[Source: One Book List (URL: http://www.go2net.com/internet/onebook/; viewed 27 October 1999); One Book List Stats (URL: http://www.go2net.com/internet/onebook/stats.html; viewed 27 October 1999).]